On TV & Radio.

The Today Programme (10 March 2011) asked a  man from Compass (the think tank) and me what we thought about the idea of a Public Sector Covenant. Is there, like the Military Covenant, a special understanding or settlement with civil servants of every sort. I said no.... Read more...

I had an outing on BBC1's Big Questions and on the issue of extremely premature babies missed an important note or two...  Read more...

Here, courtesy of the best but most irritating TV news in the UK, is Henry Kissinger on the current Egyptian revolution (if that is what it is). It was a masterclass. Read more...

Yeah, so OK, BBC1's delicious, mostly youthful Countryfile didn't actually say that the alleged world food crisis would be solved by British allotmenteers. But... Read more...

Stephen Fry has visited the coastline and the waters of the US's Gulf of Mexico and declared them to be, well, what? The victims of a spill, obviously. Maybe even the victim of the clean-up, for all we know. But not, he feels, the victim of any obvious post-accident wickedness or folly on BP's part. That was, I think, the take-away message of Stephen Fry and the Great American Oil Spill (BBC2, 7 November 2010). But the interest of the programme is not limited to Fry's being fairly sensible. Read more...

This week's Culture Show on BBC2 was as entertaining as ever, but Tom Dyckhoff shouldn't have been allowed his Tory-bashing moments in the piece on planning. (And a word on the Tea Party.)  Read more...

This is a wonderful vignette. Read more...

Evan Davis lightly mentioned in Programme 1 of his Evan Loves Tax (BBC Radio 4) that on current plans the Coalition might (intends to?) end its first term with a 36 percent tax-take (as against total GDP). I always thought the Con-Libs were conducting an extraordinary coup, but this confirms it, if true. Here are two cheers. Read more...

Andrew Marr seems so obviously nice and clever that it seems odd to find some of what he says very irritating. Last Sunday, for instance, he announced on his BBC1 Sunday show that he thought that there ought to be a crackdown on dodgy facial hair.... Where would would this end? Read more...

I had a v brief outing on Radio 4's Sunday religious current affairs programme, and it's a privilege to be asked.  Here's the crib I prepared for the event, in which I was asked about the protest dimension of the Pope's forthcoming visit. Read more...